Almost Always
by Scourge of Nemo
Summary: -AU-Extended Drabbles-slight LxLight/LightxMisa/Voyeuristic Fate if you squint- Death traps wreak havoc on soldier morale, which is unfortunate because the vengeful general is rather fond of dragging his men into them.
1. Something is Wrong Here

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_Something is Wrong Here_

– _- –_

_You have walked the paths of millions of heroes and trillions of villains and you have sentenced each and every one of those beings to death._

– - –

IT starts with pain  
followed by hate

– - –

You have always thought Light Yagami is a lovely boy, and you are even more certain of your convictions as you watch him frolic through the sea of legs and chairs, effortlessly interacting with an adult here, an adult there, and a pet or three along the way.

When his mother pulls him aside to stand out of 'harm's reach,' he is handed over to a woman whose loveliness easily rivals his own.

With a pretty smile and a flash of semi-cream teeth, she kneels by the child. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" It is a softly-posed question, spoken in baby-talk and as if it is meant for someone whose ears are too sensitive to handle anything louder than the scratching of paper against pen.

His expression doesn't change for a moment; you can see him evaluating her with his mind, working out the facts and smoothing down the deductions, flipping through and discarding possible answers.

Were he a little older, a little meaner, you would almost say that he is _humoring her_.

"A police man," he says slowly, with restrained eagerness and a bright flash of his eyes. "So I can protect people's justice, like Father." With that innocent tilt of his head, the tawny-eyed child's stare passes the woman. He looks at you long and hard, his gaze bordering on a challenge and his pupils shimmering with a color that shouldn't be there. There is something in the glow of his eyes which tells you he can almost see your criss-cross patterns and twisting arabesques of Design and Life, and that he would be willing–_is _willing–to burrow into his own grave on his eleventh hour in an infantile attempt to _throw you away_ and _tear you down_, just to _try _to snap those threads like they are the brittle Pocky sticks you have seen he loves so much.

For no more than a moment, you look away.

He's hardly been speaking in intelligible sentences for more than half a day and he's at a _party _with _osechi _smeared on his face and he doesn't understand _anything_, but Heaven, he can nearly _see you_ and he _shouldn't._ You hardly notice the woman's delighted laughter as the child answers her because you are entranced by the twitch of his pink _kamaboko_-flecked lips as his eyelids tilt and head drops in smug acknowledgement of a victory never won. A flash works its way through his eyes and the light hits them at just the right angle as he shifts his feet, and combined with the contented smirk of his mouth and eyes, you see just what he is.

He is a byproduct of faded greatness; a domesticated cat leashed so closely within the boundaries of tradition and expectation that any sense of freedom evanesced the second he took his first, shuddering breath. Everything he has is controlled by another, not personally possessed, and he never had the chance to place his own stepping stones across your river. His life has been dictated entirely by you, from start to finish. He is chained.

He is a leashed cripple who dreams to run, even if it means he'll have to drag his bounds along behind him for every step of the way.

He is three years old.

He is _three years old _and he wants to race you and _you know _the path your Threads have spun for him and you know that he's going to fray those strings and sprint right off the road into territory unknown, even to you, and you begin to hope that he might–just might–be able to find the single trail that will lead him to a life of happiness because even now, you can see that he possesses a degree of innocence that should never never_ never _be touched by anything.

And you are sad because you know that is not how it's going to happen; that that is _never_ how it happens; and that no matter what _happens,_ the law has been laid down and the future scored into your skin.

He is _chained_.

When the black-haired slip of a mother ushers him away from the crowds, your eyes follow.

– - –

fueled by the endless questions  
NO ONE can answer

– - –

Blinking confusion, and then: "She's dead."

A bandaged fist clenches slowly and the young man's muscles tense as his posture straightens; his breath picks up speed by the minutest of margins and his eyes widen in acknowledgement. There is nothing deeper. No shock, no disbelief… no visible pain, or anger. Dull acceptance settles in comfortably, accompanied by a revelation: he has been cheated. He doesn't know the why, the how, the when or the where or the _who what WHY_.

In a twisted search for escape, his eyes dart to the window looking out over the familiar arches of the Temple, only to be met with boards and nails stretched with tattered pieces of cloth.

And like magnetic puzzle pieces poured from the sky like rain, it all falls into place. _Who what when WHY where how_. All of it.

They had had money and the fiancé–they had been safe. She hadn't need to… _he could have_… should have… _would have_.

Should have.

He can't find it in himself to be surprised, though; not after everything.

"We sent you a letter…" his mother states in a whisper bitten by an impasse of unshed tears and muffled by the pale lavender mask of silk. "You should have… should have gotten it–you… you wouldn't have been out of the training camp." And her eyebrows furrow as she blinks back tears and hangs her head, trying to ignore how he looks like he's going to leap at her, throttle her….

Looking at the ground so intently you wonder if he is counting the individual spindles in the hardened wood grain, he doesn't speak.

And she stands there, guilt apparent in the uncomfortable twist of her mouth.

"The post office," come the blunted, deceptively mild words. "The post office was bombed, Mother." With that, he casts a pointed glance at the unusual roundness of her cheeks and high quality of her clothes. "I'm glad to see Sayu's death was worth it."

Ignoring her gasp–anguish, anger, shock; he doesn't care–he turns and he stalks straight to the door, dignified and cold, each step a deliberate, irrevocable movement towards oblivion. The elegant tableaux is destroyed when he struggles to pry open the sticky-hinged door singlehandedly, effectively ramming his sling into the wooden frame and eliciting a clipped yelp of pain which perfectly complements the thunk of the door against his flesh.

"What–" she begins, stopping until she sees him halt is movements in anticipation of her words. "What are you going to do?" She tries not to notice that the door is still propped wide open and he hasn't turned around.

His eyes stretch to the heavens almost imploringly and it almost seems, once again, that he can see your plans for him and that until he meets his goal, he intends to go down kicking and screaming with his fingers ripping into anything he can get his hands on… and that _when _he meets his goal, he's just going to let go. "Follow in Father's footsteps." And he leaves.

This time, he doesn't even hear her gasp and the sobs that follow, because she knows just as well as he that Soichiro Yagami's bones lie frozen in the Yana River Valley, buried under layers of shrapnel and blood and pointless death and hatred and misguided, broken people with everything to lose and nothing to gain and nothing to lose and nothing to gain and _everyone is dying_ _because they have nothing_.

And you watch the young Yagami as he treks across the street and spits at the feet of a robed Shinigami Servant standing on the steps of the Temple, and you want to _cry_. _So few_ have beaten you and you know he _can't_, not when Death's Child is involved, and you are once again overcome with the knowledge that it's all such a waste, such a waste. All a waste waste _waste_….

And you think then that you really would like to let him win.

– - –

a stain  
covers YOUR heart  
tears YOU apart just like a sleeping cancer

– - –

**A/N: A series of extended drabbles (five more pairs to come). Long story short: Light is a drafted soldier into an endless war that one side CAN'T win and the other WON'T. All you need to know, really. It's based on a co-written, as-of-yet-unposted Work-In-Progress, but this is a stand-alone. The astute reader may pick up vague insinuations regarding the nature of the original Death Note story and its place in Light's fate… if you're looking for it.**

**This piece itself is Light's [AU] life pre- and mid-war from the eyes of Fate, who not only watches people, but has a frail sort of emotional connection with them through which their basic thoughts and sensations are transmitted. (Fate doesn't have a role in the actual project, although allusions will be made.) Yes, Fate is supposed to sound madly in love with Light.**

**Disclaimer: I married Light and L back in 1864; you can check the papers. They belong to me. Unfortunately, 12 Stones' song 'World So Cold' does not. DX They wedded before I could get to them (and those dratted monogamy laws are harder to get by, these days). Oh, and you see those annoying run-on sentences? They're deliberate, thank you.**

**So. Read, review? **

–**IGC t DM+**


	2. Even These Roots are Tainted

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_Even These Roots Are Tainted_

– - –

_You have watched as nameless masses and faceless rulers fortified empires both weak and strong with the bones and blood of slaves and beggars._

– - –

now I dont believe MEN are born to BE killers  
I dont believe THIS world cant BE saved

– - –

Misa Amane makes American cookies.

Constantly.

In fact, you are beginning to wonder if she knows how to bake anything else because _no one _who knows how to cook makes so much of the same food that there is no more room in the cabinets and refrigerators to hold it. Her mother has forced her into wrapping them up and delivering them to the neighbors, which is what she is doing at this very instant.

She hops along with bags of chocolate-chip goodies in tow, dressed in clothing that's borderline 'I-want-to-be-Lolita-when-I-grow-up' (which, now that you take a moment to think about it, is incredibly ironic). Alternating between a hum and a hushed whisper, she sings, but all you catch is "Tenjin-sama no hosomichi jya" and you can't place it.

You may have seen everything, but not all of it gets a chance to sink in; your memory tends to come and go as quickly as the featureless mortals procreate, unless you devote yourself to retaining some snippet or other.

Here, now, comes the moment you are interested in. You've seen it before; despite the boy's flailing against your will, nothing in the girl's life is disrupted. The backlash has not struck quite yet and the tempest is still raging like a Category Five storm that's going in exactly the right wrong direction (because everything about this is wrong, but this is how it's intended to be).

She reaches a hand up and knocks, rocking happily from heel to toe in time with the sway of her pigtails. The door is opened; words and goodies are exchanged.

You don't listen in and are instead staring at the brightness of his smile–the smile, his _smile_–and the blush of her cheeks, but that's fine because you already know what's being said. She leaves.

Later, dinner plans are made and fulfilled–the two men laugh and drink as the women look on, amused. The boys all ignore each other and the girl does nothing but _stare_ as you have spent so much time doing and he gives her that smile that you always seem to want to dub as '_humoring_' and they start to talk, nevermind the fact that she's in school and he hasn't even stepped near one.

The fathers exchange knowing looks at the pair and you turn away because everything is going as planned and you don't don't _do not _want it to because that means that this beautiful boy will be destroyed and that these people will suffer for it.

The next day, she is there again, all giddy smiles and quiet pride; today is another one of her photo shoots and if it goes well, they will be moving within the year.

At her feet is a plate of cookies.

– - –

how did YOU get here and when did IT start?  
An innocent child with a thorn in HIS heart

– - –

Despite the garish ornamentations of white and silver, there is something ominous in the air.

White-robed acolytes glide down the gravel aisle, draped in copious amounts of silver jewelry that _can not _be pure. They have managed to capture the flick-swish-_step _motion that adds a billow to the folds of their costumes and works to make them appear as if floating in twisted unison but are not managing to draw _your _eyes away from the fact that their 'temple' is little more than a run-down apartment building hung with gauzy curtains and layered with 'pebbles'. There is something vulgar in the very nature of their game–the way the lure humans with promises of safety and companionship and grandeur, only to entrap them in the twisted mass of religious doctrines and condemn them to a life of earth-born hell.

Still, they offer life rather than money and do not take advantage of human-conceived notions of family loyalty and are, as a result, most certainly better than the other popular option.

Kira worshipper or Shinigami Servant.

Slave or dead man.

You can't decide which is worse to the humans, but you know you would take death over the ridiculous head-dress the Japanese branch of Kira-followers–the Yatsuko–recently adopted.

She enters.

The line progresses and as each inflated figure reaches the altar, it lays down an embroidered pillow covered with whatever wealth they have regained since the last moon's offering.

Something about these mismatched colors strikes you as amusing and you begin to giggle madly; the emotion manifests itself in the way the wind sings through the crags and cracks of the city and makes the priests and priestesses shiver because they can feel the malicious intent. They mistake it for the blessing of their god as they kneel before the row of pink and green and yellow and orange and yellow and purple and red and black and brown and silver and polka-dots-with-whiskers pillows and raise their hands to the sides.

It's never up or down–just out.

You seek out the maiden with the honeyed hair, you find her, and you watch.

The chants begin, slow and steady and probably a rewording of a Gregorian chant. Cheap incense is everywhere and electric candles flicker in the back of the room, almost completely concealed by the _real _wax instruments; you wonder if there is a situation more _false _than this. It makes you want to retch.

As you look at her outstretched arms and rapturous eyes–you can only ever see their eyes, now–you wonder if she realizes she's inhaling the same scent embraced by millions of Satanists and hippies over prior decades and centuries. Probably not, you decide; even with all her dabbling in the various forms of the occult, she no doubt believes the overbearing patchouli is a gift from her _god_.

There was a time when Misa Amane wasn't psychotic, and you are quite certain you can remember it. Barely.

– - –

what kind of world to WE live in?  
where love is divided by hate  
losing control of OUR feeling  
WE all must BE dreaming THIS life away

– - –

** –IGC t DM+**


	3. Some Wounds Will Leave a Mark

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_Some Wounds Will Leave a Mark  
_

– - –

_You have learned that there is no such thing as a great man; only a clever, cautious man who is adept at hiding secrets right before the eyes of others._

– - –

IN a world so cold

– - –

Climbing trees has never been his strong suit, which makes you wonder how he had gotten high enough into one to fall.

Then again, this bawling boy with the shattered fibula has been shocking you all his life.

As he rocks to and fro across the ground, screaming little child screams of agony and grasping at his leg frantically with tears and sweat and sadness pouring down his face, this moment, like so many others, reminds you of his humanity and mortality. There is no "quick fix" or "easy way out" of this situation and the pain it brings for him, not unless you intervene–and you know _that _is not an option.

All you can do is feel it happen–the pound of rubber tires vibrating against the cement composed of your materials and the pulsating whirls of vibration and color leaking into your air; the leech-like, sucking, fraying strands of human thought and emotion leaping in and out of your pores–and watch with the eyes of others.

Life blurs for the boy and the clock ticks–white coats are everywhere, poking, prodding, weaving over and around each other in an endless, arcing dance of equipment and breath. Anesthesia is distributed and the boy thinks "They must not have many injuries, to be so panicked over a leg-wound" beneath all of his panic and clammy skin and thirst as clouds of emptiness close in and the colors blend and twist. He barely registers the needles because the blood is beating in his ears like drums in the midst of a paradiddle and he can barely lift his arms and move his lips to plead for something wet to put on his tongue.

You've seen much, much worse, but the child is frightened and somehow, he doesn't seem quite so strong and quite so wonderful while he's lying in a bed, whimpering from a wound that was most certainly not impressive in the least.

If he can't even take this, you wonder how he will be able to stand through everything that the future promises and realize that your endless preordinations have declared that he _will not survive _and that maybe, just maybe–maybe, maybe, _maybe_–their decision is right. In his state of weakness, it becomes apparent that despite all appearances, he is not strong and he cannot endure.

You had forgotten he is human.

– - –

are YOU sane? wheres THE shame?  
a moment of time passes by  
YOU cannot rewind  
WHOs to blame? and where did IT start?  
is there a cure for YOUR sickness? have YOU no heart?

– - –

The twisted, sneering visage with a hooked nose is lying discarded on the cot beside him and the new, temporary mask of flimsy paper is sketched with strategically slotted holes that remind you of the path of machine gun damage on the inactive tank that lays a ways from the tent. You can see none of his face, but you know from the flat glint in his eyes that its expression is one of bored, tenacious control. The needle glints wickedly as the rough doctor picks away at the jagged shrapnel embedded beneath young man's skin. In and out the string flashes, binding more than nerves and vessels–tying life to life and thought to thought.

Anesthesia is a luxury in war and he has never been one to knowingly waste comforts on himself, but you do not want to peer any deeper into his refusal of medication because you know exactly what you will find, and you wish it wasn't _there_.

The needle dips and dives lithely, building and ripping its own path through flesh and blood and the young man meets the glare of the healer steadily. "You won't be able to get any more of my face without cutting the mask off; I can deal with the rest on my own." Shards of wedding ring and gun barrel twirl across his fingers with each determined shift of his palm and his comment, delivered as if it were junk-mail, receives an owlish blink. The man ties off the wound, snips the thread, and scratches the back of his shaved head with his left wrist before shrugging and giving the wounded soldier a look you've only seen on the faces of spiders calculating how far they can run before a child with a rolled newspaper will catch up.

All it takes is a slow blink and a slight twitch of his red-streaked, metal-spotted hand for the drafted doctor to jump uneasily because, like almost all of them, he is afraid of the angry young man and the power he holds over them and somehow, he knows that with a flick of his wrist, the young man can have him destroyed by Fate and Circumstance and that Light Yagami is _most certainly _not a man to hesitate in front of.

His orders _will_ be obeyed by them and you're beginning to see that they will be obeyed by _you_, too, because he has an air about him that fascinates and confounds and _compels _and you can't stop _watching and wondering _and so much has begun to change already that all you can do is wait and wonder because _some things are not as they should be _and _almost everything is backwards and upside down and inverted and spun and twisted and deformed_–nothing is going like expected and you're beginning to wonder if the unearthly interference doesn't come from the soldier himself, but the halo of forces that surround him.

The war-maker has gone too far–_so, so far_–something tells you as the young man sits silently as his body is carved apart because of his own deeds.

When the fixing is finished, he replaces the face you have come to recognize as his–the mask that you could swear looks just like a skeleton in certain light–and grips the bandages in distraction as he pockets the lumps that symbolize the remains of his marriage.

The knife-laden female stands on the outside of the tent flap, hair askew as always and hands fidgeting with a roll of raw dough. Her words are harsh–exasperated and sarcastic: "Why in the name of the Pillsbury Doughboy didn't you just melt it down into a bullet and shoot something with it?"

He glances at her out of the corner of his sapstone-colored eyes and the corner of his lip curls into a smirk that is _almost_ fond and clouded with more than a small amount of pain. "Too melodramatic. Cliché."

– - –

now I dont believe MEN are born to BE killers  
I dont believe the world cant BE saved

– - –

**A/N: Duct tape is like the force. It has a dark side, it has a light side, and it holds the universe together.**

**They can both be used to extort reviews. ;)  
**

–**IGC t DM+**


	4. Despair Overtakes Us

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_Despair Overtakes Us  
_

– - –

_You know that some men have killed and oppressed more than others and it seems to you that liberators are rarely as crafty as slaughterers._

– - –

how did YOU get here? and when did IT start?  
an innocent child with a thorn in HIS heart

– - –

Sports have always been rather dull in your mind, but feeling his labyrinthine mind work through the steps and reflexes provides enough amusement to keep you interested for a time.

You would rather not confess, though, that you have grown into the habit of drifting away from the boy and watching Ugandan children fight over the placing of their bedrolls after the fifth bounce of the neon-lizard-green ball. When he wins, you drag yourself away from tragic faces to watch him beam.

– - –

what kind of world to WE live in?  
where love is divided by hate  
losing control of OUR feeling  
WEre dreaming THIS life away

– - –

Blood bathes in his clothes and hair and skin and threatens to fasten his eyelashes together as it dries but he keeps going and destroying and taking and he just won't _stop_!

The sky mocks him as it pours crystalline tears of white down onto the crimson and the orange, mocking him, kicking the guttural shout of "Did you come here to watch me _burn_?" (raggedly screamed at the sky just minutes prior) right back at his mouth in a spray of dirt. Already, the bodies of his enemies trip his feet and fire rages on all sides and smoke clogs his lungs as he wheels and shoots with more anger and panic and self-preservation etched into every line and plane of his body with each movement of his finger against the trigger; you fear for him, now, because an epiphany has just wormed its way beneath his façade and it may well be the very doubt that leads to his downfall.

He _can_ die; that, he has always known.

Now, though, he is a _target_.

For a moment, you think he stares straight at you once more with those uncanny instincts flaring in the depths of his irises.

The flames are drowning him (at least he is warm) and he pulls back, searching the roiling fray frantically for a familiar uniform to latch onto as all semblance of command flees his body. He has reverted to humanity's most basic mindset: survival. Embers and sparks flicker in his dark eyes as bullets scream around him; he crouches low, creeping towards the light of another's flashlight and his stubbled face is shadowed by the flame-resistant mask the dream you sent him had hinted at–a hand reaches up and grabs the form in front of him by the shoulder, squeezing with no regard to the other's comfort.

You don't know when he made it to his knees, but he did, and the crawling soldier before him wheels around and reflexes kick into motion; a flash of movement and feral instinct and her eyes widen as she pulls her gun from her commander's face.

"Penber," he coughs through the red and orange and blue and grey, transferring his weight to her shoulder.

She gives him a grin that nearly matches the ones he so commonly dons, so raw is its savage despair. "Let's get out of here, Sergeant." And with that, she shoulders part of his burden, hoisting his arm over her shoulder and dragging their bodies inch by coughing, hack-filled inch with the flames and the steam of the would-have-been snow licking at their backs the whole way. He tries just as hard as she, but they're just so weak and so tired and even in the flames–especially, _especially _in the fire–you are struck by how much he's changed and ruined and repaired and how he's so much like a rabid, wounded wolf now; nothing like that pitiful kitten you first remember being drawn to.

You give them a helping hand.

– - –

what kind of world to WE live in?  
where love is divided by hate  
selling OUR souls for no reason  
WE all must be dreaming THIS life away

– - –


	5. They Die

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_They Die  
_

– - –

_You have seen how, in the recent centuries, corruption has become careless to the point of conspicuity and the force of unhappiness has remained as compulsive as ever._

– - –

in A world so cold

– - –

_You have watched as every little thing has fallen apart again and again and again, then returned to its original state only to crumble into an even lower level of disparity._

– - –

theres a SICKness inside YOU that wants to escape  
its a feeling you get when YOU cant find YOUR way  
so how many times must YOU fall to your knees  
never? never? never? never do this again

– - –

_You have seen so many people with so many talents and this boy is just like the rest, but he has been thrown into humanity at its nadir and that makes all the difference._

– - –

IT starts with pain followed by hate  
now i dont believe MEN are born to BE killers  
i dont believe the world cant BE saved

– - –


	6. Salvation Never Apparent

ALMOST ALWAYS  
_Salvation Never Apparent  
_

– - –

_You try to laugh every time a young girl wishes herself away to the elves or the princes or the vampires or the Goblin King, but you can understand all too well why they might try._

– - –

what kind of world to WE live in?  
where love is divided by hate  
losing control of OUR feelings  
WEre dreaming THIS life away

– - –

If he has anything, it is an endless stockpile of questions.

Every day at lunch, it's a different person–sometimes a guy, quite often a pretty girl. They always have problems, and few of them are interesting or unanswerable, but he thinks about them anyway and helps the questioner reach a conclusion by guiding them to the proper facts without throwing instructions in their face–his penchant for subtlety has developed over the years, but it is fading with each passing day his father spends on the battlefield.

Light Yagami is becoming quite the dramatic soul, and as you recognize this, you are thankful that no obsessive (everything he does is obsessive) love of art and music has manifested itself as he ages, because were he gifted with something even somewhat resembling artistic talent, he would not need a gun or blade to kill.

Knowledge alone is nowhere near as formidable as knowledge and emotion together and no being would give such power to a human; not even _this_ human.

He is declining, though, you can see–it shows in the tired, dull gazes he gives . Deteriorating, disintegrating, _deflating_ as his world collapses around him. As brilliant–as intuitive–as he is, he is too young to understand the unknown and it is killing him because he _knows _that there is something lying _just _beyond his grasp of reality and that that something is the essential key to one of his thousand shackles, but he can't reach it no matter how much he squirms and struggles against the sticky sheen of inexperienced, tainted innocence that wraps itself around his perceptions.

He is weary.

To him, life is all about knowing and it seems to you that he deals with the questions for the sheer sake of the _questions _themselves, but there is more there, a hollow in the pit of his stomach and a drive that you have seen time and time again in humans that pushes him towards something new, but he doesn't even know what he's searching for and you've never been able to decipher this longing. Even with the snitches of emotion you steal from him and the insight they bring–even with the ephemeral connection you have found from his conscience and his soul to whatever it is that constitutes your being, you cannot puzzle out this particular facet of his.

All you know is that it makes him ask the questions over and over and _over_ and makes him count the spindly lumps of ceiling again and again and _again _as he lies awake at night, squeezing his fist against the writhing in his gut.

The questions dictate every aspect of his life and his existence revolves around the point at which they are answered–or not answered.

Questions, questions, questions. You are beginning to wonder if the question matters more than the answer–he has so many that sometimes, you have to admit that he already _knows_ the answers and is simply asking the questions again, again, and _again _in the desperate hope that someone will be able to step up and _lie_, because no one ever really wants to know the truth; most certainly not him or you.

– - –

what kind of world to WE live in?  
where love is divided by hate  
selling OUR souls for no reason  
WE all must BE dreaming THIS life away

– - –

Death traps wreak havoc on soldier morale, which is unfortunate, because the vengeful general is rather fond of dragging his men into them.

The frosty numb of stone is affecting _you_ and with every fleeting echo, shudders reverberate through the silken cords of nothingness between the creeping shadows and your sinuous presence. The building is a prison and the halls are dark–outlines of shape and color are fleeting and valuable in the dusky world, but in comparison to the silent screams wailing in the minds of the husks of life chained within the rocky walls.

For a high-priority prison stuffed with political prisoners, security is surprisingly lax. Suspiciously lax, but he knows where he's going and he knows how to get there and he's _certainly _not going to complain if it just so happens that no one gets in his way.

They round another bend, and another, and another, and they are suddenly struck with the uneasy feeling that _no one is watching them _because _no one can find them _and that this _hole _buried deep beneath the fortifications of the Fourth Wall has never been successfully penetrated and _escaped _for a very, very important reason that had _nothing _to do with armed, competent guards.

Everything looks the same, everything sounds the same–everything _is the same_.

It is a maze.

You can see his apprehension in the tightness of his shoulders, but he halts before a door and twists around, gesturing at the line of soldiers behind them. Frantic scrabbling ensues and within moments, the door has been evaluated and measured and hung with explosives, and then it is gone in a bang of smoke and clatter and all you can hear are bells–silver bells, horrible, ringing bells–and screaming and pain.

There is a groan.

He walks forward with careful steps, and then he's at the wall and his hands are all over the chains and his fingers fumble with the keys as he realizes that the prisoner may well be dead because he's barely breathing and he's so skinny you can see his pulse dripping through his entire body with every beat of his heart, and he doesn't want to lose the prize.

The chains clatter against the wall and the older man slumps down, curling in on himself before the soldier lifts him slowly, gives the troops a nod, and begins to wind his way back through the tunnels, completely ignorant of the watchful enemy commander whose past and future coincides alarmingly with that of the man he carries.

And in that moment, everything as it has been changed collapses together in your mind and you are _certain _of what is to come, and the force behind it is _deadly_.

This is new and this is wrong and _nothing _you have foreseen has been _anything _like this because you look at the dark-maned skeleton collapsed in his arms and you know that–praise the _heavens_–you have finally found the missing variable that, somehow, never existed before this point; you look and you _know _that (_thank you, thank you, thank you_) this is the key and it is slipping away, sliding away, _wasting away into absolutely nothing because it _wants_ to _(and for humans, _want _is more influential than their religions and their needs and their families), but you know that you can stop the corrosive path he forges toward the edge of _that _particular slope.

This is the man who will save Light Yagami, and for that, you are going to save _him_.

– - –

in a world SO cold

– - –

_You are Fate and you know everything that is, was, and will be and how to change it, but you choose to let life fold out as the forces of the universe intend._

– - –

in a world so COLD

– - –

Almost always.

– - –

**A/N: If you've gotten this far, you might be interested in the story that this was based on. It was penned by The Carnivorous Muffin and me. **www(dot)fanfiction(dot)net/s/4797162/1/Mors_Vincit_Omnia

**–IGC t DM+**


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